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Books: Three of a kind - Help in raising your self-esteem

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Published: 16 Jan 2006

Last Updated: 31 Aug 2010

Confidence Boosters
Martin Perry
Hamlyn £6.99

Written clearly and with well-laid out exercises, this handy book not
only tells you how to improve your levels of self-confidence but also
explains why they might be depleted. And if you're an arrogant bastard,
Perry will tell you how to keep your ego in check. The approach is
practical, if sometimes patronising; otherwise, Confidence Boosters does
exactly what it says on the tin - BEST OF ITS KIND

Weekend Confidence Coach
Lynda Field
Vermilion £8.99

Get past the naff chick-lit cover and the schmaltzy preface, and Field's
chatty style draws you in. By using everyday anecdotes and giving
emotional advice, Field hopes to make you your own confidence coach.
Will she succeed? Her approach won't suit everyone - Weekend Confidence
Coach is more Bridget Jones than Alpha Male - but no-one would expect
Philip Green to need this kind of self-help book, anyway - COULD BE
USEFUL

Confidence
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
Random House £14.99
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Those looking for a more heavy-weight discussion of confidence will want
to pick up this offering. Harvard professor Kanter considers what
confidence means for individuals, business, countries and even the West
Indies cricket team. Her style can be rather self-indulgent - her
favourite movie is Major League; her friend Linda had a bad divorce -
but this is an original read - COULD BE USEFUL.
Management Today16/01/2006Books: A good motivator or the root of all evil?This jaunty trip through what cash means to us offers entertainment
but little useful analysis, says John McLaren.

If this was a review for Butterfly Monthly or Organic Quarterly, I'd
hesitate to presume that most readers had a healthy interest in money,
but I suspect that I'm on pretty safe ground with MT. So for all you
lucre-lovers, I can recommend this book as a bright and breezy blast
through the subject.

We get an examination of money's role in the workplace, in the nursery,
in our personal lives, even in the loo. There are a few old chestnuts,
of course, such as 'money is the great aphrodisiac', the only evidence
adduced for which is that rich old men often have trophy wives. This may
demonstrate that young spouses are beguiled by wealth and status, but a
barrister might object that it hardly proves that they like the sex.

(It reminds me of the tale of the young man who learned that he was
going to inherit a fortune when his sick father died. He went to a
singles bar, approached a ravishing woman and told her that any day now
he would inherit a cool 20 million. So she went home with him and three
days later became his stepmother.)

Familiar though the component parts may be, the book taken as a whole
will make you reflect on your personal relationship with money, and some
of the checklists and tests are very entertaining. But the authors fall
down when they try to offer real advice.

The most comical example is the chapter on children. The authors start
out - reasonably, no doubt - by suggesting that many parents find it
easier to discuss sex or drugs with their children than money. But
practical suggestions, delivered with tongue far from cheek, include
explaining to seven to 12-year-olds how VAT works, the use of verbal and
written contracts, and taxing their pocket money.

The lavatorial section is, unsurprisingly, very Freudian, and, starting
with the great man's fascinating assertion that the anus and money are
intimately related, goes on to warn parents not to confuse their kids by
treating their potty products as miraculous bonus-worthy performances
and then rapidly flushing these treasures away. Make this sort of
mistake, we are told, and you may be creating a spendthrift or
miser.

The workplace section is less amusing and the least original part. The
message is that money can motivate but also cause problems, and there
are many non-financial ways to gee up the troops, such as appraising
them regularly, making them feel more empowered, blah blah blah ... Not
exactly the first management book to suggest this.

Indeed, it takes the authors until near the end to point out that it's
relative rather than absolute wealth that makes people happy (a view
expressed by nearly every study of the subject). Their overall recipe is
stunningly platitudinous: 'So to be happy, get a good job, a satisfying
close relationship and a meaningful philosophy of life ... Exercise,
sleep well and realise that happiness does not result from economic
success.' I'd have hated to go all the way to Delphi to get that from
the oracle.

What's also disappointing is the absence in the analysis of any sense
that times change, and, with them, approaches to money. Money may not
have been a big motivator when employees could reasonably expect to stay
with a company until gold-watch time, but in an era of hire and fire,
multiple careers and short economic cycles, many people are forced to
take a different view from that of their fathers.

The impact of money has also changed. Fifty years ago, there were many
financial classes, since business hierarchies had more layers than
today; relatively few people owned shares, or received bonuses or
inheritances. Everything significant that you might have wanted to buy
cost a lot: families defined themselves by whether they had a car, a TV
or central heating, took foreign holidays, etc.

The consequence is that today the practical difference between, say, a
schoolmaster and a chief executive is surprising small, except in
bragging rights. (Does renting a big villa in Tuscany really provide the
family with a better time than a simple gite in the Dordogne?)

What we're left with is a book that's light in both senses. There's more
than a hint here of a magazine article stretched to book length. But
it's a fun article.

- John McLaren is chairman of the Barchester Group and a novelist. His
latest novel Blind Eye is published by Pocket Books.